PLYSTUDIO has moved

For those of you following our blog, we are pleased to announce the migration of PLYSTUDIO's web and blog content to here. While we are still fixing some bugs and finetuning the site, do visit and let us know what you think.

As such, this blogger site will gradually be no longer used for any PLYSTUDIO content.

Again, many thanks to our readers out there.

Saporiti Italia

Recently we have been privileged and honored to be selected as one of the Singapore-based design practices to participate in the Saporiti Italia Design Award - 'The Luxury Towers' project.

This is an invited competition organised by Saporiti Italia with the scope of 'promoting the development of cultural and technical relations between the Italian and Singaporean design communities. The brief is to conceive of a collection of furniture objects aimed to contain luxury objects. The issues at hand hinges on the perceptions of the consumer mass market in the luxury goods segment and what is 'globally' perceived as luxury.

Saporiti Italia, a leading italian furniture and design company has produced some of the most advanced and leading furniture products for various illustrious clients. Saporiti Italia has a long history of working with architects and designers to develope new products and this award is no different in trying to forge a meaningful collaboration. This is the Saporiti Italia showroom in Singapore, where the competition briefing was held a few days back.

[Image by Saporiti Italia]

We will be cracking our heads on this one in due course.

May Updates

Its time to catch up on the blog again after last few weeks of meetings, design presentations and site coordination works on various projects on the work front.

Things are looking really busy for us. This month, 2 more of our interior projects started on site, we got some new jobs in the pipeline (1 more residential small apartment interiors and 2 commercial food and beverage shops) and possibly, a new standalone bridge structure to be designed and built. Will try and post some images of the work soon.

Of Stars and Stripes, Flowers and What Nots

I'm sure for the local readers out there, you must have seen these two buildings that were recently completed.

The top is the Iluma Shopping Center at Bugis and the bottom is Wilkie Edge at Selegie. Surfacing amidst the arts and civic district are these 2 new trendy buildings designed by the same architecture firm, and possibly one of the most successful local practices today.

We took a walk inside Wilkie Edge recently and this was what we saw.

Stripey floorsOrganically shaped ceiling cutoutsFloor and ceiling effects coming togetherCeiling ceiling everywhere

Perhaps these buildings need to be appreciated at the urban scale; we've read with interest its attempt to break out of standard building typologies, its integration of climatic considerations and greenery and its response to street level activities. At the building scale, the direction seems to be that of a firm trying to redefine its own design language, at both the formal level as well as at the level of building ornamentation albeit manifested through exquisite construction details. Though we have not been inside the Iluma yet we would be trying to make a visit soon. Can we expect more of the above? Or perhaps more flowers in the vein of another one of their creations, the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

On d+a

Our projects J-Loft and the apartment at The Sail have been published on local and regional architectural and design magazine d+A, Issue 49, 2009. Entitled 'Shaped by Architectural Meaning' we think the article aptly describes what we at PLYSTUDIO are preoccupied with, the critical thoughts that define what we do, the questions on prevailing types and contexts we are operating in.

Many thanks to the editor and writer for the critical review. We can only agree with the writer on the last paragraph...'good design is never a single good answer but will always ask good questions'.

Random

Apart from being a record of our ongoing work and a critical platform to share our ideas I have decided to include in this blog random samplings and observations from our urban environment that could be of any interest. It's just my critical viewpoint on things - usually those that I cannot comprehend and not concluded without any architectural reasoning. So here we go.

Taken from a visit to the local community center. Take a look at the floor plan. Really wonder what is the inspiration behind it.

Industrial landscape

this is what we see each time we visit our builder's workshop in this 'flatted' factory, which is the typical building solution offered for light to medium industries. the building may not have much architectural merit per se, but is somehow typologically successful. open courtyards and airwells, efficient circulation, dedicated service and visitor access make visits here pleasant. such is the image of our industrial landscape.

Towers and Trees

just find this photo I took interesting, with the towers in the background and trees in front. working on a housing development design competition right now, one can't help but be obsessed with issues of views, scale, massing, tower placements etc. its the ultimate environmental battle between the man-made and nature.

Supergarden Revisited

Stumbled upon a previous issue of local design and architecture magazine 'd+a' from late last year and was greeted by its coverage of Singapore Supergarden, which involved the participation of selected local designers and architects at the 2008 Venice Bienale.

Our installation entitled "The Picnic" is shown on the bottom left of the second image below.

Again, a great job on the curatorial effort from our friends at Farmwork. It should be back on our shores for the local exhibition soon, details to be updated.

See also our previous post on Singapore Supergarden.

A Garden in the Forest

The restored barnhouse (from the previous post) is the site for an Interpretative Centre to be built by the National Parks Board at the Dairy Farm sector of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.

What is interesting about the Dairy Farm Hut, as it is also known, is that not only does it sit curiously on the boundary of the nature reserve it is also very much surrounded by nature. It is connected to other similar 'installations' (red squares on the map above) and is a checkpoint along the Dairy Farm Loop, one of the main hiking trails negotiating the nature reserve.

[Image : National Parks Board]

The project brief for the Interpretative Centre called for the centre to be open not only to the public but also to nature. When we went to the site, we realised what that meant - the barnhouse did not have any doors.

Strategically this became the starting point for our proposal. Given that nature surrounds the barnhouse building in a pervasive way, in the same manner, the notion of being enveloped in nature will be critical for the experience within the Interpretative Centre. Also, we sought a position of the project as residing at the interface between man-made and nature, akin to its geological location on the boundary of the reserve. These 2 critical thoughts developed into a plan organisation and diagram of relations between the new qualities and conditions we were interested to explore.

The plan is organised into 3 concentric zones of experience. The first is a sensorial zone thought of as a conceptual forest which sees the continuation of nature from the surrounding environment taking over the ground and wall surfaces through time. The second is defined by 2 interwining ramps containing the exhibition circulation, of which the exhibition content can be similarly curated. Lastly the innermost zone houses a raised man-made garden with resting areas and seats cladded in astoturf. The garden itself is sustained by a large planter containing treated soil of depth to the level of the raised garden.

[All images by PLYSTUDIO unless otherwise stated]

Hence the title of this post. Lets hope we will get a chance to work on it further.

We will be updating our website soon with more project details and information.

A trip to nature

[Image : GoogleEarth]

A recent work assignment and job pitch brought us to this place right in the heart of our city state, the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Its hard to believe such nature existed amid our urbanised environment. Its 1.64 sqkm of area accounts for just 0.2% of Singapore's approximate total land area of 699.1 sqkm. Yet it is only 12 kilometres away and some 15 mins drive from the downtown core and financial district.

This is one of the largest areas of primary rainforest remaining today. Just imagine what the natural and geological characteristic of our island was more than 100 years ago. Today it is the site for popular hiking trails and considered one of the nation's 'attractions'. It is home to various spieces of flora and fauna, protected by the National Parks Act and managed by the National Parks Board.

Our impromptu site visit was obliged by the resident officer who led the way via a service road into the deep confines of the primary rainforest. Interestingly, what we experienced was none of that untouchable nature, but one that revealed the impact of urban intervention.

Arriving at the new carpark that was still under construction. Guess this place will be receiving quite a number of visitors.

Making our way into the forest in a way that we are used to.

Can't ride your motorcycle in here.

And finally arriving at the site for the project in question.

We were intriqued by what we saw to say the least. It was just amazing, a 'contemporary' styled barnhouse restored and completely modernised with new whitewashed interior walls and a brand new roof. Now all it needs is just some greenery so that it doesn't feel so out of place in the middle of a nature reserve.

Work in progress

Construction work has been progressing steadily the last 2 weeks, now the apartment is already more than half way complete. Below are some work in progress photos.

Entrance view

Builtup elements : cabinets, seating, platform, ledges etc

Sleeping platform

As always, communicating with builders with 1:1 sketches on site

New reveals and extension of the bay window

Next up - timber flooring